


Neither Angry Nor Kind

by the_rck



Series: Vialle, Daughter of Oberon [3]
Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny
Genre: Background Sibling Incest, Canonical Character Death, Cosmology, Gen, Minor Character Death, Murder, Patricide, Referenced murder, Transformation, rewriting the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2019-02-19 10:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13121511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_rck/pseuds/the_rck
Summary: Vialle wasn’t sure why she wanted to be there. No, she knew. She wanted to be sure that Oberon did die. She was certain he hadn’t lied when he said the repair would take immense power and energy. There might never be a better chance to kill him.





	Neither Angry Nor Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Prinzenhasserin for beta reading.
> 
> There is vomiting in this. It's not extremely graphic, but it's also more than just a mention.
> 
> Implied infanticide and family murder quite apart from the tagged for patricide.
> 
> Title from Kiki Petrosino's poem, “Ghosts.”
> 
> This went in a direction I didn't expect. But, basically, it wouldn't have been all that interesting to have Vialle set out to find and kill Oberon and then wander Kolvir the whole time while he obligingly died off screen, so... This happened. 
> 
> I don't know that much in here actually out and out contradicts canon because it's all events (and background truths) that Corwin and Merlin wouldn't know, but I kind of feel like I took a swan dive off the cliffs of canonical implausibility. The main canonical hitch is the whole bit in the Merlin books with the Primal Pattern having consciousness and considering Luke's blood a serious danger.
> 
> So, apart from Dalt, I'm ignoring the Merlin books.

Vialle thought everyone had forgotten her. Gerard and Oberon both knew she was still in Amber, that she had not gone with Random into battle, but neither of them seemed to have given any thought at all to what she might choose to do with everyone else gone.

No doubt they thought her incapable of any action that might change the situation.

Oberon had let his children believe that he was risking his life to repair the Pattern. That might or might not be true. He had been known to lie, and Vialle thought it something that he’d say simply to regain his hold on them. Or, perhaps, as a cover so that he could vanish for a while.

She suspected he’d realized that being King was a lot less fun than pulling strings from behind the scenes.

She wasn’t sure she could find the Primal Pattern without help. Random had told her what he knew, but his cues for shifting Shadow relied heavily on visual detail. He was trying to learn what she needed, but they hadn’t had much opportunity to practice.

She also wasn’t sure why she wanted to witness the repair of the Primal Pattern. No, she knew. She wanted to be sure that Oberon did die. She was certain he hadn’t lied when he said the repair would take immense power and energy. There might never be a better chance to kill him. 

If she walked the Pattern in Amber or in Rebma, she could have it take her to the center of the Primal Pattern. There was risk in that course, and not just that someone might see her do it. She’d never walked the Pattern without someone else beside her in case her senses failed her, and she strongly suspected that the damage caused by Martin’s blood might interfere with her sense of where the lines were.

Besides, if she waited at the center of the Primal Pattern, Oberon would see her. She doubted that any sort of spell could conceal her presence there. And there was the matter of blood-- She wasn’t sure she could kill him without blood; his or hers, it wouldn’t matter in the least. She didn’t hate the rest of her family enough to think that destroying the Pattern was an acceptable price for their father’s death.

Even if she hadn’t cared about Oberon’s children, she had spoken enough with Martin and Dara to understand how much destruction would result if the Pattern fell. Reality itself would shatter, and universes would die.

She had also spoken with them enough to learn how a shapeshifter could die. Dara had said that Vialle might need to know, might face assassins from the Courts of Chaos. Martin had not said anything in response to that. Vialle was never sure if that was because he already knew she could protect herself-- she’d been one of his teachers after all-- or because he guessed how she hoped to use the knowledge.

She was never entirely certain that Dara hadn’t guessed Vialle’s intention, either. Oberon’s death might serve Dara, too, but only if Corwin never guessed.

After the army departed and while Oberon and Gerard were still making plans, Vialle left the castle to find the Primal Pattern. She wasn’t sure how long it would take her, so she took what supplies she could carry without impeding her movement. Some things, she could conjure, but that was beyond unreliable for food and water.

For a weapon, she took the stiletto that Eric had given her two years before Corwin’s escape. She’d thought it a gesture of gallantry at the time, but now she wondered.

“It’s not a Patternblade,” Eric had said, “but such are easily noticed, and I think you… choose not to be.” He’d shown her the little twist of power that made it lethal. “Now, you have the option to kill any of us.” Eric had laughed, but she wondered if he’d seen it coming. She’d never thought to ask him if he’d made the blade or where he’d acquired it. She’d also never shown it to Random.

Which made her think that she, at least, had had this in mind, as soon as she touched the stiletto.

The guards were used to seeing her go walking to visit the city below the castle. Her habit was to go alone, but on this occasion, the sergeant at the gate insisted on sending someone with her. “Just in case of enemy attack, my Lady,” he said apologetically. “I wouldn’t like to explain that to His Majesty.”

He sent a woman named Anidreh with Vialle. Vialle had the impression that he chose a woman just in case Vialle had any errands that she might be embarrassed to have a man see.

Vialle could smell sweat and oil, leather and metal, when Anidreh came to stand next to her. Vialle reached out an unerring hand and touched her fingertips to Anidreh’s arm. “I’m pleased to have company.” She put warmth and friendliness into the lie. She still hoped she wouldn’t have to kill anyone except Oberon.

“My Lady.” Anidreh sounded young, terribly young, and Vialle tried to convince herself that this was a good thing. It might make the girl more willing to believe lies. It might also mean that she’d never have heard anything but good of the recently returned King.

Vialle waited until they were many yards down the mountain before she said, “Visiting the city actually wasn’t my intention.” She put wistfulness into her voice. “I wanted to find somewhere to sit, away from the castle, away from people. Random’s too far away for my magic to be any help to him, but I thought I’d feel closer to him amid the scents of the mountain.”

Anidreh didn’t say anything for a moment.

Vialle wondered if she’d have to try the Pattern in the basement after all. Even if she could steel herself to murder this guard, she wasn’t fool enough to do it in front of witnesses.

“Would Prince Corwin’s tomb do? It’s easy enough to get to.”

Vialle smiled. “Random and I have had picnics there.” Picnics during which Random had told Vialle many things his father and brothers probably assumed were private. Corwin’s tomb was as good a starting point as any and well out of sight of anyone who might question why, when Anidreh suddenly nodded off, Vialle left her guard behind. “I actually brought some food. Enough to share.” She might go hungry later if she were out longer than she expected, but it would be easier to put the other woman to sleep if they shared food.

Vialle let Anidreh lead the way. Vialle probably could have found the place on her own, but she’d have had to move more slowly because she couldn’t smooth the ground in front of her feet, not on Kolvir, not the way she could in Shadow.

As they walked, Anidreh kept up a cheerful monologue, mostly speculation about what the Princes and their army were doing and where they’d gone with occasional digressions into discussion of plants growing around them.

Vialle focused her attention on trying to get a feel for the substance of the Shadow in which they walked. There must be something malleable about it if Oberon could move even here. She knew that there was likely a trick to it that he simply hadn’t taught his children. She hoped she could find it. 

She didn’t let the probability of failure push the gentle smile from her face. As long as Oberon didn’t realize she’d tried, it wouldn’t change anything if she failed.

The walk to Corwin’s tomb took about forty five minutes. By the time they got there, Vialle was ready for a rest. If she’d been on her own, she probably wouldn’t have allowed herself to take it, not with time as pressing as it was, but she still had to deal with her guard.

At least Anidreh would likely be safe sleeping next to Corwin’s tomb.

Vialle ate a little dried fish and some dried fruit. She offered some to Anidreh along with some bread. When the other woman accepted the food, Vialle began to weave a spell to cause anyone present, apart from her, to sleep for several hours.

Before she had quite managed the spell, Vialle heard Anidreh gasp in awe. Judging by additional sounds, she realized that Anidreh had fallen to her knees. Vialle let the spell disintegrate and opened her senses to all forms of power.

“The Unicorn, my Lady,” Anidreh said softly.

The power in the creature that approached was almost stunning. Vialle had to narrow her perception considerably in order to be able to look at all. She wondered what this meant for her plans. Surely her grandmother would oppose her attempts to murder her father?

Or did the Unicorn not know?

Vialle stood and offered a curtsey. “We are blessed,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she was speaking to the Unicorn or to Anidreh. She was sure, though, that Random had not been meant to repeat Corwin’s tale about how Oberon was the son of Dworkin and the Unicorn. She bit her tongue on the urge to address the Unicorn by the title dictated by their relationship.

Anidreh definitely shouldn’t know that.

The Unicorn didn’t speak, but the sense Vialle had of her grandmother’s power grew to fill the entire area around the tomb, to wrap itself around Vialle and Anidreh.

Could she even speak? Vialle hadn’t ever met Dworkin, but judging by Oberon, Dworkin would have liked a mate who couldn’t talk back. Except that the Unicorn was more obviously powerful than anyone else Vialle had ever met. Or was everyone else just hiding it with more care?

Vialle curtseyed again. “Do you know why I’m here, Honored One?” She had no idea how she ought to address a God.

After a moment, Anidreh said, “She nodded, my Lady.”

“And you know who I am?” Vialle took a hesitant step toward where she thought the Unicorn was. It might lead to her death if her grandmother valued Oberon more. Vialle wasn’t sure how she’d react if one of her as yet theoretical children became a monster of that sort, so she really couldn’t guess how some other woman might feel.

Vialle planted her feet and squared her shoulders. “I just want them all to be able to become better people,” she said softly. “They won’t ever as things stand.”

Something touched her mind. Vialle hesitated to let it in but realized that it was only courtesy on the other side that gave her a choice. She took a deep breath and opened herself up.

Information came like a bolt of cloth unrolling under her fingertips. She felt the different textures that had woven themselves together to create Amber, to create the Pattern, and to create Oberon. There was blood in it, so much that she was surprised the fibers held it all. She smelled it, almost choked on the horror of it, and knew that she’d remember this for the rest of her life, even when she forgot everything else.

A very little of what she learned was new to her, but those parts made all the others shift. “Are you sure you want that?” Vialle wanted to be certain that the Unicorn wouldn’t change her mind at the last minute. “If it is, I will-- I _can_ \-- but you have to be sure.”

The response was a wordless wave of exhaustion.

Vialle’s knees almost buckled under the weight of it, but she forced herself to stay upright. “No. You’re right. None of the others could.” She took three steps forward with her right hand reaching in front of her. Her fingertips brushed something soft and prickly that she assumed must be the Unicorn’s coat. Once she had a firm sense of where the Unicorn was, she turned her head toward the last place she knew Anidreh had been. “Go home or wait here for me. I will return eventually.” She suspected that the fact that she actually might not was clear on her face.

A suggestion nudged Vialle’s mind.

“No,” Vialle said. “I can choose. This child can’t.”

“I’m not a child,” Anidreh’s words sounded half assertion of fact and half denial of something heard too many times before. “My Lady--”

Vialle shook her head. “This is no honor, Anidreh. Once we start walking, this will be a thing you cannot unknow and cannot reveal to anyone else.” _And, if it turns out that I actually can’t do this, you will die. I would rather you not._

Vialle heard sounds that made her think Anidreh had knelt. She heard a blade being freed from sheath.

“My sword is yours, my Lady.” Anidreh’s voice was firm. “Whatever you need to do, I will stand with you.”

Vialle kept one hand on the Unicorn’s flank and extended the other toward Anidreh. “Let me touch your sword. The hilt, only that.” She heard Anidreh moving and a moment later felt the guard’s hand brush hers.

That hand was wrapped around the hilt of something that Vialle supposed must be a sword. Without feeling the weight, she couldn’t be certain, but Anidreh had said ‘sword,’ and the guards usually did have them.

For the first time in many years, Vialle let all of her magical veiling fall so that she could bring forward her power, including all of the Pattern that was in her. She focused that into the metal of the weapon, trying to avoid letting any of it enter Anidreh’s flesh.

She supposed that, if they both survived, she’d find out later how much she’d changed the young woman.

A moment later, energy flowed from the Unicorn into Vialle’s body, and she realized that the Unicorn had wanted this part, this passage of power, much more than Anidreh’s company. Which showed an understanding of Vialle’s character that Vialle knew she should find terrifying.

How long had her grandmother been planning this?

She felt the Unicorn start to tremble under her fingers and hoped that the creature could manage the rest of what needed doing. She let her hand drop from Anidreh’s sword. “You’re the only one who knows the way, Grandmother.”

Anidreh might as well know that much.

The Unicorn started to walk, and Vialle followed closely enough to keep physical contact. She heard Anidreh inhale sharply and then start moving after them.

Reaching the Primal Pattern took less than five minutes, subjectively; later, Vialle realized that it must have taken much longer than that, and she wondered what places the Unicorn had led her through and why. She guessed that it was part of changing her so that she could do what needed to be done. She didn’t think it had involved alteration in her personality. She hoped that, at least, because she wanted to think she had remained herself.

Vialle was certain she could reach the Primal Pattern again easily enough. Assuming she ever wanted to.

The Primal Pattern pulsed in her awareness. She could feel the energy in it shudder and vibrate, struggling to break free of the channels that held it. Her throat felt dry, but she knew she had no time for water. “How far from the center is he?” she asked Anidreh.

The guard didn’t answer for a moment. “Halfway, my Lady. I think. I-- He turned left. There are sparks. I can only see him as a shadow through them.” Anidreh’s voice firmed as she spoke, and Vialle realized that the young woman was accepting the reality of what she was seeing.

Anidreh’s words let Vialle focus her attention on the part of the Pattern where her father was. She wasn’t much surprised that he was in the heart of the part that was closest to breaking its walls and flooding out.

He might have been telling the truth about the risk involved in making the repairs.

“So much easier to break than to repair.” Vialle couldn’t quite keep sorrow out of her voice. She wondered if that flaw came from her grandfather’s training or lack thereof, his temperament, or-- most terrifying-- some lack of power in him when he started the project.

Blood was brittle.

“We need to go to the starting point,” Vialle said. The Unicorn already knew that, but Vialle thought she might be having second thoughts.

And Anidreh had no reason to guess.

They started walking again. Getting to their destination felt like the longest walk Vialle had ever undertaken. She knew that the time was measured in seconds. She knew that she’d made her decisions before she ever met her grandmother. Vialle focused on counting her breaths.

When the Unicorn stopped moving, Vialle’s feet stopped, too. “Now we wait,” she said softly. “He will come here, after.” She knelt and felt the Unicorn do the same next to her. “Anidreh--” She couldn’t think of the right words for a moment. She sighed. “You should go. Whether I manage this or not, you will have to choose between him--” She waved a hand toward the Pattern. “--and her.” She nodded at the Unicorn.

Between treason and-- Vialle wasn’t even sure what the word for refusing the directly stated word of a god was. The people in Amber worshipped the Unicorn, worshipped her father’s mother. She wasn’t convinced that the creature by her side could have an effect on anyone’s existence after death, but Oberon had told them she did.

“There’s nothing more you can do here.” She cleared her throat. “If I-- If I don’t come back, tell my husband that I put you to sleep and disappeared.” She wasn’t going to die; she knew that much. She just wasn’t sure how much of herself would be left after. She could feel more and more of the Unicorn’s power passing into her body.

By the time Oberon finished his work, the Unicorn would be ready to die, and Vialle would be ready to kill her father and her grandmother.

Vialle monitored the flow of power as Oberon labored to repair the Pattern, so she knew when he reached the center and wasn’t particularly surprised when reality stretched and popped. She heard a thud followed by heavy, exhausted breathing.

“It seems you’re not dead,” she said. She wondered what his face looked like. At this moment but also in general. She supposed it was as well that she’d met him and spoken to him. She could regard him as human-- as much as any of them were-- rather than as the boogey-man she’d built in her imagination.

Llewella’s bitterness had made him seem so much bigger.

He took several more noisy breaths before he answered. “Why are you here?”

She smiled. “I was curious.” She wondered if he’d believe that. She ran a hand along the Unicorn’s back. “I wasn’t sure I’d get here in time to observe.” For some reason, she was remembering the pity she’d felt for him the first time they’d talked privately. She sighed. “It’s worse, somehow, that you’re just an ordinary monster.”

He didn’t answer for several seconds, and she listened carefully so that she’d know if he managed to move. “Are you mine or Llewella’s?” There was a strength in his voice that she read as his best attempt at self-defense.

“Biologically, yours. Otherwise--” Vialle shrugged. “Very, very definitely Llewella’s. Except that she’s afraid of you.”

“You’re not?”

“I don’t think there’s anything I could do that would make you more likely to kill me than the simple fact of being your blood and… physically imperfect. There’s a great deal of freedom in that.”

He made a sort of choking sound, and it took her a moment to realize that he was laughing. “I suppose you think you’re going to kill me?”

“I don’t think any of the others could.” She let that stand for a moment. “If they could, you’d have been dead a long time ago. I’m pretty sure it’s not affection that’s stayed their hands.” She was pretty sure, at this point, that he really couldn’t even crawl. “Grandmother’s almost done, Father.”

The stillness after that was such that she almost thought he’d died because there was no trace of him breathing.

“I accept the price,” she told him. “I don’t think that any of my siblings-- any who still live-- could understand remaking the foundation this way.” She smiled in his general direction, making the expression as gentle as she could. “A foundation built of blood and shored up, repeatedly, by blood. Grandmother told me.”

He still didn’t say anything, but he started breathing again.

“She still loves you, and you’ll go together.” Vialle thought it thin comfort, but she did hope it provided something. “She’s just tired. Beyond tired, really, and you wouldn’t let her go. It’s time.” She rose to her feet. “You can go with someone who loves you, sent off by… someone who doesn’t hate you. I don’t think, after all of this, you can expect better.” She stretched and felt new power moving through her body.

“Don’t--”

It took her a moment to realize that her father wasn’t pleading for his own life but rather for his mother’s. “That part is her choice.” Part of Vialle imagined the man in front of her as a small child, as Martin wanting to know why his mother didn’t love him enough to stay. “Sometimes,” she told Oberon, as she had told Martin, “people leave because they can’t stay.”

She walked carefully around the Unicorn to get to her father and went down on one knee beside him. “She’s only waiting for you to be ready.”

Oberon sighed as Vialle touched his shoulder. “No fear of my curse?” The words came out as a rasping whisper, as if most of his life had already left him.

“I was mainly worried that you’d have enough left in you to shapeshift.”

“And you hoped I’d do you the favor of dying on my own.”

She inclined her head to one side, keeping her expression serene. “Naturally. I think it will be better if everyone thinks you did.”

He started to laugh, but it turned into a wheeze.

She laid a hand along his cheek and wondered if he was afraid. Then she inserted a little of the power she’d inherited from the Unicorn between Oberon and the Pattern.

He flinched. The sound he made might have been-- probably was-- pain.

She held herself very, very still and pushed her mind through channels that Dara had promised her would still a shapeshifter. Vialle didn’t understand how anyone could use them in combat, but Dara had said that people did. Practice, Vialle supposed, like everything else.

As long as it worked this time.

When she was done, he said, “You came prepared.”

She almost laughed. “It’s not as if you’d give me a second chance.”

“No.” He shuddered under her hand. “After-- After, you’ll have to follow the Jewel to the Courts of Chaos. I’ve sent it to Corwin, but he says he won’t be King.”

That surprised her, both Corwin’s choice and that Oberon would use his last moments to tell her that.

“The Unicorn must choose.”

For a moment, she was confused because she thought it was another plea for the life his mother no longer wanted. Then she realized that, of course, he meant Vialle as the Unicorn’s heir. She’d been avoiding looking at that part.

He didn’t say anything else, and she thought it cruel to make him wait longer. She was fairly certain that, at that point, she could have used any blade, could even have strangled him if she had to. She had the family strength, after all.

But Eric’s stiletto seemed most fitting. Eric wasn’t the first or the last of Oberon’s victims, just the only one to have given her something that might have worked even if she’d tried it in a dark corridor. Eric must have known.

She forced the blade into her father’s neck at a point that she hoped would be covered by his collar once the body was laid out for viewing and used the blade as a focus to rupture the blood vessels that flowed to his brain. She breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that she’d managed not to let him bleed. A drop or two would likely not reach the Pattern, but she’d feared any more than that might.

As Oberon’s life ended, Vialle heard the Unicorn take her final breath. She reached back to touch her grandmother’s body and was only a little startled to feel it starting to evaporate. Vialle waited almost a minute then stood. Her body shifted from human to unicorn and then back as she mixed the Unicorn’s energy with her own and with the very little bit that had been left of Oberon’s power. Then she reached for her connection to the Pattern. Once she had that firmly in hand, she forced every trace of what she held back out, through the Pattern. She kept pushing, kept her focus, until her body gave out.

As she fell to her knees, the power washed back over her, filling her and choking her. As it settled, she turned her head away from the Pattern and vomited blood. Her blood but not her blood, that of all the dead siblings who had kept the Pattern functioning and the Unicorn alive for so long.

She repeated the process three times and was beyond grateful that the last pass brought not even an iota of blood. That was no longer the foundation of the Pattern, would never be again. She wasn’t sure what she’d put in its place. Whatever she had had in her, she supposed.

Whatever it was, it had to be better than blood from the unwilling, and the new manifestation of the Pattern had to be less mad, less dangerous than the echo of her long dead grandfather which had taught his son’s children how to destroy them all.

Perhaps Dworkin had been trapped, too, and seeking freedom the only way he knew how. That would explain a very many things.

She let herself lie, unmoving, on the bloody ground near the Primal Pattern until she heard footsteps approaching. Then, she tried to move and couldn’t quite. 

The steps were too heavy and in the wrong rhythm to be Anidreh’s, and she was almost certain she wasn’t lucky enough for them to indicate Gerard’s approach. Gerard wouldn’t be happy about what she’d done, but he was the kindest of her brothers. The footsteps sounded wrong, however, and she couldn’t convince herself that it might be him approaching. She just couldn’t imagine who else might have found them.

Unless Brand had come to destroy the Pattern again.

She considered how much he might have observed and supposed she might be about to die after all. She wondered what Brand would make of becoming the Unicorn. He might not even realize it was a risk.

“I could.” The man’s voice sounded more contemplative than hostile. “I don’t think you could stop me.”

Vialle was pretty sure she couldn’t. She was also absolutely certain that she’d never heard this man’s voice before.

“I couldn’t have done _that_ , though. Wouldn’t have thought to.” He sighed. “I expect your blood won’t break the damned thing now.”

Vialle started to shake with silent laughter.

“I’d intended to use _his_ blood, but you got there first.” He sounded more aggrieved than angry.

“You could have interrupted.” Vialle just barely managed to force the words out.

“Yes.” He didn’t add anything for several seconds. Then he said, “Your motives were nobler than mine.”

She heard a creak of stiffened leather armor combined with some small sounds of metal on metal and guessed that he’d gone down on one or both knees, so she wasn’t entirely surprised to feel him touch her arm.

“I’m your brother, too,” he said, “just unacknowledged rather than unknown. I suppose it doesn’t actually matter.”

She spent a few seconds trying to remember things that Llewella had told her about the brothers she’d never met. That one had been acknowledged. That one was definitely dead. She went down the list. “Dalt,” she said at last. “He was saving you for when he needed a powerful death.”

He didn’t respond for a moment. “You would know more about that than I.”

So he understood at least a little. She wasn’t willing to clarify it for him. Their father wasn’t going to sacrifice anyone else, so Dalt didn’t need to be warned. “You might as well walk the damned thing,” she told him and was more than a little surprised to realize that she knew he hadn’t. “It’s not going anywhere, and I don’t think anything Brand made would welcome anyone else.” 

She didn’t think she needed to ask if he was working with Brand. Dalt would never have found the Primal Pattern without help.

He didn’t answer her directly. “Do you need something? Food? Water?”

Not lying in vomited blood would be an improvement. She managed to move her arm enough to be able to grasp his, and he seemed to understand that part without her needing to speak because he pulled her up and supported her for about a dozen steps before lowering her to the ground.

He gave her water.

Her fingers recognized her own waterskin, and she almost dropped it. “My guard?”

He made a small noise she couldn’t quite interpret. “Unconscious. She fought like the devil, and that’s one hell of sword she had. If she’d known how to use it, I might actually have lost.” He sounded just a little amused. “I suppose you want me to give it back.” He didn’t even bother making it a question.

“Thank you for not killing her.” Vialle emptied the waterskin before she went on. “I don’t know. She--” Vialle waved a hand in the direction of where their grandmother had died. “--was pulling the poor child into this, and I couldn’t think how to protect her, so I-- Well. I wasn’t even sure if Anidreh could use the damned thing or what it might do.” She set down the now empty waterskin. “Just having been here for this--” She shrugged.

“More?” 

She felt his movement and held out her hand for what he offered. This was a metal container that sloshed. She found the stopper and removed it. The contents smelled reassuringly like water, so she downed it all.

“How much are you going to need?”

“Enough to stop tasting blood.” She wasn’t sure there was enough water for that in all of Shadow.

“You’re going to need more than water for that.”

She suspected that he was right, so she shrugged rather than denying it entirely. “I’m Rebman. Water is… more there than it is here.”

He started to laugh. He didn’t say anything further until after she’d eaten everything he had to offer. “Your guard is trying to decide whether or not she can kill me and rescue you.”

Vialle’s hands clenched. “I would very much rather no one else died of this.”

He laughed once, very softly. “If you weren’t already married, I’d come courting.” He paused for a second. “I don’t suppose--?”

She shook her head. “Random and I suit very well.” She allowed herself a laugh to answer his. “And Llewella might not have been able to kill our father, but she’d certainly gut you if you… made me unhappy.” She didn’t bother making it a threat. She didn’t think Dalt was going to try anything, not unless she actually said yes.

“You can blame me,” he said.

She took several seconds to catch up with the change in topic. “Oh, yes. For Oberon.” She sighed. “I’d rather they just not realize there’s anything to be blamed for. He repaired the Pattern, and he died of it. He said he might.”

“Ah.”

She hoped that was understanding she heard in the syllable. “He really was terrible for the children he knew he had.” She was pretty sure that Dalt would understand that she included him in that number. “Terrible to them, as well, but it was mostly his shadow warping things.”

She heard Dalt stand.

“I have nothing else to give you, my lady, so I’ll take my leave.”

She heard movement that she suspected was a sweeping bow. All of her brothers seemed to be prone to such things. She hadn’t figured out how it could be genetic, but if Dalt did it, he hadn’t learned it from Oberon.

“I will take your suggestion, though,” he said. “About walking the Pattern. It’s past time.”

Vialle sat unmoving while her brother walked away. She remained where she was until Anidreh came and knelt beside her.

It wasn’t until some days later that Vialle realized that Dalt had taken the sword. 

She barely heard Anidreh’s questions at first, but when she understood, she touched the other woman’s head. “You are not to speak of anything I did here,” she said, reinforcing the command with a pulse of power that she hoped would hold without damaging the young woman. “That includes my conversation with that man. After I go, take the King’s body to Prince Gerard. Tell him we came here by accident, that you saw the King finish his work, come back out, and die of the magic. Tell him you saw me speak with the Unicorn and that you do not know where I went after.”

“Yes, my Lady.”

Vialle considered Dalt’s offer and took a deep breath. “Mention that man’s presence only if there are questions about how the King died. Questions from anyone of the Blood.”

Gerard might still notice the wound.

She put her hands in her lap and sat and listened while the guard lifted Oberon’s body. “We will speak again later,” Vialle said as she rose to her feet. “When I return.”

“My Lady-- Who will be King?” Anidreh actually sounded as if she thought Vialle might know, and it occurred to Vialle that she didn’t actually know what Anidreh had heard or seen.

But there wasn’t time to ask.

“That is for the Unicorn to decide.” Changing to her new, four hoofed form felt easier than standing up had. Returning to human form again was slightly harder but still not difficult. She allowed herself a smile. “He won’t want it,” she said softly. Then she became the Unicorn again and began to run, using the Pattern to smooth the path under her hooves so that she wouldn’t trip over things she couldn’t see.

Random was going to hate being King, but she suspected that he was the only one, out of all of them, who both could and would do it.


End file.
